Thinking about target audience

When making any film, the makers will have to decide on who their target audience are. Usually big film companies will want the widest range of audience to boost their chances of making huge amounts of money. To entice their audiences they use and include certain aspects in the trailer, posters, adverts and commercial material. At the moment we are planning our trailer and we will need to think about what strategys to use to make sure we reach our target audience.

Our target audience will be couples and young people age 15+. We are choosing to aim for people 15+ plus because if couples see that the film is a 12 rating then they may think that it may not be scary and could be a bit childish. Below is the characteristics of a film with a 15 rating:

Characteristics

Theme: No theme is prohibited, provided the treatment is appropriate to 15 year olds.

Language: There may be lots of use of strong language; the strongest terms are only rarely acceptable. Continued aggressive use of strong language and sexual abuse is unacceptable.

Nudity: There are no constraints on nudity in a non-sexual or educational context.

Sex: Sexual activity and nudity may be shown but without strong detail. The depiction of casual sex should be handled with care. There may be occasional strong verbal references to sexual behaviour.

Violence: Violence may be strong but may not dwell on the infliction of pain, and of injuries. Scenes of sexual violence must be discreet and brief.

Imitable techniques: Dangerous combat techniques such as ear claps, head-butts and blows to the neck are unlikely to be acceptable. There may be no emphasis on the use of easily accessible lethal weapons (in particular, knives).

Horror: Sustained or detailed infliction of pain or injury is unacceptable.

Drugs: Drug taking may be shown but clear instructive detail is unacceptable. The film as a whole must not promote or encourage drug use.

I found this information among many websites including the BBFC guidelines.

We could place the film under the 12 rating bracket but we believe that by placing it under 15 couples and teenagers will be able to relate to it much more. As we aim to use typical clichéd horror techniques in our trailer we believe it will be better, if, we were going to rate this film, that it would be a 15. Our target audience will be couples and the younger generation. This is because the main characters are young and are a couple so people will be able to put themselves in the characters shoes.